Sunday, 24 February 2013

These first couple of weeks in the second semester we have been toying around with a sort of independent, yet group learning idea. From day one I was skeptical. Not skeptical because I thought it was a bad idea, but skeptical because it's not the norm. Skeptical because for the entirety of my life as a student I've been told what to do, leaving it as my decision whether i was going to do it, or not. Now all of a sudden, in my final year of high school, my teacher essentially says- "how would you feel about learning about what ever you want?".

I got to thinking about it, and now feel overwhelmed with the fact I cannot decide what I want to learn about! With all of these possibilities running through my head, i ask questions like; is that school appropriate? Do i really want to know that more than this? Being so close to graduation, I don't know if i have the motivation to come up with my own projects or assignments, let alone do them!

If this idea would have been introduced before my last semester, I would have been all over it! I still think it's a great idea, and am for sure going to give it a try. If it shows signs of being something successful, maybe the education system has a place for this in the future! If not, we know the old monkey say, monkey do method works every now and again, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

Now for things I've actually learnt so far in this Comprehensive LA course. We have commit ourselves to using the internet and the resources it supplies us as an advantage. This whole blogging thing is new to me, ergo it is something i have learnt. We have also been casually reading poetry as a class, followed by a discussion. Something that has shown me is that an audience is made up of different minds, which means that when a poem is read, certain lines or even just a word, could be given a completely different meaning by each member of the audience.

I guess that has been the past couple weeks as a COMP student for me. I'm excited to see where this will end up!

Donald Miller is a great story teller, and his ability to recall dialogue in detail impresses me. In Blue Like Jazz, he talks so highly of his father, which confuses me. If i had only seen my father three in times in my life, and things that reminded me of him were mostly scents of alcohol, I would be rather pissed off. Also, if Miller thinks so highly of his father, why would he struggle with the idea of God being our 'father'? I understand that his father was not necessarily a physical presence, but I don't need two hands to count the amount of times i have physically seen God.

Through out the book, he has consistently makes little humorous comments that amuse me, such as- "Girls start to sin when they are 23 or something", and "It is a pretty good idea to make noises when you are at a play."

I am on the fence about his idea exploring how sunday school turns the bible into a children's book by leaving out significant details. On one hand i know that kids in a christian home should grow up with some stories to have an idea of who this God character actually is, and i know that drowning the entire population is something they shouldn't visualize. On the other hand, I think kids should know just how serious this religion thing is. They should know how powerful our God is, and what he is capable of.

Millers word choice in the second chapter when he talks about himself realizing that the problem with the world starts with himself is phenomenal. That sudden realization that you are a part of the worlds problems is one most people make, and instead of writing a song about it (Michael Jackson), he included it in one of his books. It is definitely an important realization, and i'm curious as to what he changed about himself to help solve the problem, if anything at all.